“When I was 7 years old, I tried a taste of my parents’ coffee,” said Ithmah Coffee owner Donovan Talbott. “And I said, ‘this is it!’ Which is the weirdest thing ever. I’m a big dreamer, and it’s always been my dream to have a coffee shop.”
While not quite a coffee shop, Ithmah is a specialty coffee roastery located near the intersection of 33rd Street, Portland Avenue and Northwestern Parkway, which wholesales its product to local coffee shops and restaurants, including Foko in Shelby Park, Stomping Ground in Valley Station and The Well Coffee near Iroquois Park.
Donovan has relationships with coffee bean producers from Ethiopia, Colombia, Guatemala, Mexico and Brazil, with which he deals directly with the bean farmers on the ground thousands of miles away. His calling card is his unique air roasting process. He says his machine – which he discovered for sale online from Port Chester, New York – is one of only a few in the state. Like a caffeine-fueled mad scientist, Donovan runs the machine through a variety of hoses and filters, a robotic arm with a heat knob, and finally a computer with a software program called Artisan, which helps him gauge and regulate the all-important flavor profile. This digital data enables him to replicate certain flavors, consistently roasting the finished product and adding a level of hands-on professionalism and craftsmanship that is rare for larger operations.
“The goal is to highlight the natural characteristics and bring out best flavor of each bean and each region,” he said. “It’s definitely more effort and work, with the probes and the data and graphs. But it puts the focus back on the farmer’s work.”
But scientifically aiming for roasting excellence is only part of Donovan’s driving mission. His brother Cameron founded a company in Mexico in 2018, Oak Life Global Orphan Care, which helps improve the quality and consistency of orphanages and missionary work, the conditions of which can vary greatly and be pretty horrific not just in Mexico was all over the world.
“That’s at least half the reason I started this,” Donovan said. One dollar of every bag of coffee sold goes to Oak Life or other orphanage-focused charities.
Donovan ended up in Portland thanks to his friendship with Portland resident and builder Jared Miller, who was working on remodeling the attached building.
“Jared’s the whole reason I’m here,” he said. “I’ve known him most of my life. So he called and said, ‘I got this great garage, know anybody who might want to rent it out?’ I told him, ‘funny you should say that…’ It’s been two years, and I feel like we’re supposed to be here. We were called to be here. It was a blessing.”
The space next door used to be an apartment, which Donovan said was “pretty scary,” and took him and Jared a year to get it in decent shape, thanks to decades of deteriorating nasty tile and gross drop ceilings. “We transformed it, gave it some love.” Donovan uses this space as his packing and shipping headquarters.
Donovan, a ten-year veteran of the coffee business — who had a successful stint in Indianapolis, roasting out of his apartment — was working at the Sunergos Coffee on 5th Street downtown in April 2020 when the COVID-19 lockdown claimed his job.
“Everybody was reassessing at that time,” he said. His wife Genesis joins him in his mission. “Once I stopped the rat race, I realized I wanted to my own thing, but I wanted it to mean something.”
Remember that Ithmah is not a walk-in coffee shop, but you can visit www.ithmahcoffee.com to learn more about their coffee and cause and place an order.
